When Thomas Weisel started working in Silicon Valley, Intel was still an idea and Sand Hill Road was more orchards than offices. Weisel went on to build legendary San Francisco investment banks, including Montgomery Securities, and has taken more than 1,000 companies public, from Yahoo and Amgen to Tandem Computers and Micron Technology.

A fierce competitor - known for driving fast, cycling hard and skiing aggressively - Weisel also created the organizations that finance the sports of skiing and cycling in the United States, including the development of athletes, the coaching and the competitions. Weisel personally bankrolled cyclist Lance Armstrong in his seven Tour de France wins, and Armstrong called Weisel the "most competitive person I have ever seen."

These days, Weisel, who lives in Ross, remains an investment banker, but he is pouring a considerable amount of his competitive energy into another passion: building a world-class art collection and making his mark on San Francisco culture.

His impressive collection focuses on the artists of the early New York school, the California figurative movement, and American Indian works. When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reopens in 2016, three of its galleries of California art will be named after Weisel. And he has just donated his American Indian art collection of about 200 pieces to the de Young Museum for a show opening this weekend.

'A balanced life'

"I've always liked the idea of a balanced life, but when you run something, it's all-consuming and you have to be there every morning and every afternoon," he said, sitting in his 37th-floor corner office in San Francisco's Financial District, filled with Lucite cubes marking completed deals, family photos and stacks of art catalogs. A painting by the abstract expressionist Edvins Strautmanis hangs where three of Armstrong's signed yellow jerseys were once displayed.

Weisel said that now that he's not in charge of the day-to-day operation of an investment firm, he "can have a balanced life. I can do philanthropic things, whether in the art world or athletic world. I can spend time with my family. All of these things are intellectually challenging."

At 73, Weisel (who goes by Thom) is clearly having fun at work, play and as a parent - his 19-year-old son learned in mid-April that he made the U.S. Ski Team. But Weisel also has been mired in the international doping scandal that brought down Armstrong and 11 teammates.

In a series of interviews, Weisel talked about his disappointment in Armstrong - who once likened him to a "father figure." Weisel said he never knew of doping on the team, never saw an instance of performance-enhancing drug use, and clearly didn't know the cyclist like he thought he did.

Weisel was not named in the United States Anti-Doping Agency report, a scathing indictment of Armstrong and his teammates' conspiracy of doping. Allegations implicating Weisel - including by a team masseuse and by Armstrong himself - have not been substantiated, and Weisel has not been charged with wrongdoing.

"I knew nothing about what (Armstrong) was doing, and I'm extremely disappointed in him and everyone involved," Weisel said. "But I've been disappointed with a lot of people in life. I liked Lance. His training regimen was off the charts. I thought he was a gentleman of the utmost character, and he looked like a champion. It's just one more thing that you don't control, and you couldn't control. Life throws you curveballs."

Weisel went on, "I built some very fine investment banks. I helped a lot of people do some great things in the world. Cycling (and funding the U.S. team) was maybe a half a 1 percent of my life. I had nothing to do with the running of this team. I think they (the cyclists) didn't want me to know. They paid for their own drugs. They kept it to themselves. I was a sponsor. I helped finance it. I played that role. But I certainly don't define myself as that. I have a lot else going on in my life."

Weisel, who has been called the alpha male of Wall Street West, has a square jaw, strong build, focused gaze, and the look of someone who could take a pounding and not go down. And he has an exuberance that belies his buttoned-down, pressed suit-and-tie image.

At epicenter of change

Weisel (pronounced WIZE-ell) has ridden economic boom times and retrenched during downturns, from the market collapse of Oct. 19, 1987, to the recent recession of 2007 to 2010. He's watched the epicenter of Silicon Valley move to San Francisco, as venture capitalists followed tech upstarts.

"Everything was very Silicon Valley-centric, but over the last five years - under 10 years, let's say - entrepreneurs want to be in the city, and not in the hinterlands," Weisel said. "There are some negative implications, whether with higher real estate or more expensive restaurants and more traffic, but this kind of innovation is really good for the city."

Jim Davidson, co-founder, managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake, a technology investment firm, has known Weisel for 25 years.

"He's very smart, and he's always looking for a way to differentiate himself to provide real value to clients," said Davidson. "And the thing about Thom today is that, at some level, you know he doesn't have to be doing this anymore. He has nothing to prove to anyone."

Weisel sold Montgomery Securities to NationsBank for $1.3 billion and Montgomery's asset management division to Commerce Bank for $250 million in 1997, before founding his eponymous firm, Thomas Weisel Partners Group, in 1999. He is now co-chairman of Stifel Financial, one of the nation's largest middle-market-focused investment firms, which acquired Weisel Partners in 2010 for about $450 million.

'A front row seat'

"Investment banking has been vilified, but it's 20 percent of the U.S. economy, and a major part of the global economy," Weisel said. "Being an investment banker has given me a front row seat at the center of innovation."

Being an investment banker also put him under scrutiny. Weisel and his company have faced several regulatory investigations, including one involving Weisel Partners' sale of auction-rate securities (the firm was cleared of most charges in 2011 and given a slap-on-the-wrist fine of $200,000). Another probe, part of an industry-wide reform effort, involved a conflict of interest between Weisel Partners' research and banking divisions (the SEC fined the firm $12.5 million in 2004 and required it to change some internal practices).

Weisel says his firms have always operated in an impeccable manner.

"You don't get anywhere in this business without having a high-quality reputation," he said. "You build a reputation one transaction at a time, so then you have 100, and then you get to 1,000. Now, in my case, you have thousands over decades. I'm pretty proud of my entrepreneurial instincts, and my ability to build and sustain great organizations."

Weisel was born in Rochester, Minn., and grew up in Milwaukee. His father, Wilson, earned his medical degree at Harvard, where he played semiprofessional hockey and held track records, before becoming a noted thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon.

Thom took up speed skating as a kid, won the state championship at age 10, and went on to win five national age-group championships. While a freshman at Stanford, Weisel placed third in the 1959 Olympic Trials, just missing a place on the U.S. speed skating team for the Games. He earned his economics degree from Stanford in 1963, and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1966, where he was classmates with Michael Bloomberg (the two men once owned a ski condo together).

Stories of Weisel's love of sports and competitive drive - and the hard-charging culture of the banks he led - are legendary.

Hired good athletes

"We had a great culture with outstanding people in every area of the firm," Weisel said of his days at Montgomery, which he led for nearly two decades. "And, yes, we did hire people because they were good athletes. They were also smart and had good communication skills. I believe athletics teach people about life, how to win, how to be confident, how to dig deep, and how to sacrifice."

Weisel also has been active in mergers and acquisitions in his personal life. He has seven children, including two under the age of 3 with his fourth wife, Janet Barnes, who worked in institutional sales at Montgomery Securities in New York.

"I have seven kids and eight grandkids," he said with an incredulous laugh. Reaching for a family photo of a half-dozen kids standing in front of surfboards, he added, "We were just in Maui for a week, and we were out surfing almost every day. I'm a little more cautious than I used to be because I had two knee and two hip replacements. But I'm biking almost every day (and) I'm skiing a lot."

His home in Ross is filled with more family photos and art, including the first painting he ever bought - a Richard Diebenkorn - for about $15,000 in the early 1970s. There are works by Joan Brown, Wayne Thiebaud, David Park, Franz Kline, John Graham, Nathan Oliveira and Arshile Gorky. There are also two newly acquired works, by Los Angeles artists Mark Bradford and Mark Grotjahn.

Standing in front of Bradford's painting titled "Thievery of Slaves," Weisel marveled, "He has such a phenomenal presence. You see the energy and the layers of color," Weisel said. "You see the abstract elements of (Willem) de Kooning."

Weisel, who has been a trustee at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for 32 years, recently committed to endowing the museum's chair for the curator of painting and sculpture.

"Thom is, in the most wonderful way, an extraordinarily competitive man," said SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra. "The way it manifests for us is that he wants us to be great, and he gets in there, rolls up his sleeves, and he works. He puts his strong shoulder behind everything he does here. Thom also has one of the deepest rolodexes in captivity, whether in the VC community or tech or financial services. He knows everyone."

'Thom is forever young'

Benezra added, "He's a great collector who recently became interested in a couple of young guys - Bradford and Grotjahn. His discovery of these two painters, in particular, has reinvigorated his collecting drive. Thom is forever young."

Weisel's love of American Indian art comes from his interest in history, in how people lived and what they were able to create.

"I think I can understand and appreciate good art, and when I started seeing some of the Navajo weavings, and some of the pottery, I really thought these were great artistic pieces," Weisel said. "I spent almost four decades acquiring this collection."

The hundreds of works given to the de Young span more than 1,000 years and focus on the indigenous arts of the American Southwest, including 11th century Mimbres ceramics, masterful Navajo weavings and the first Plains ledger drawings.

Colin Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, said he admires Weisel's "awe and respect for art, and the makers of the art."

Matthew Robb, curator of the Arts of the Americas at the de Young, said the gift will allow the museum to "present Native American art in a more holistic way. We will be able to tell a story about Native American art on the West Coast, really from Alaska to the Southwest."

Giant totem pole

At home in Ross, Weisel headed out to the terraced yard and pool overlooking the back side of Mount Tamalpais State Park. A giant totem pole, 50 feet high and 6 feet around, serves as the property's landmark.

"This piece is contemporary, and was done by Jim Hart, a Haida master carver," Weisel said, admiring the work featuring a bear transforming into a woman, a raven and culminating with three watchmen on top.

"It took him a year to find the right tree," Weisel said of Hart. "Then Jim and his whole family and his carvers came down and stayed with us for the installation. Knowing the artists makes collecting so much richer."

Looking back up at his New England-style home, built in 1903, he added, "I'm still doing what I've been doing for 40 years - investment banking. But I'm also able to spend a fair amount of time with philanthropic activities, with my art, and time with my kids is incredibly rewarding. I like what I'm doing."

Weisel exhibit

Lines on the Horizon: Native American Art From the Weisel Family Collection: On display at the de Young Museum through Jan. 4. Golden Gate Park, S.F. For information: (415) 750-3600 or https://deyoung.famsf.org.